Husband of a UK doctor here.

first, childbirth is fucking dangerous. Its also unnecessarily painful. In terms of risk[1], the epidural is not the thing thats going to cause "morbidity", its the baby coming out breech or massive internal bleeding.

A non insignificant number of women literally tear themselves a new arsehole when delivering a baby. Yes elective caesarians can carry higher risks, but also might be required to actually deliver a live baby, or save the mother.

THe problem for the statisics is that there is a difference between elective caesarians and emergency once. If you group them together, then you're going to get a higher mortality/morbidity rate, because there’s a reason why it was an emergency

Personally I have no fucking clue why people wouldn't want an epidural. My wife didn't want one the second time because "she wanted to get home quicker" (by a fucking day) it turns out by her own words: "it was way way more painful without the epidural" bear in mind shes a fucking doctor, and a paediatric one at that.

[1] Women of African origin in the UK have worse outcomes in child birth, partly because of the lower uptake in pain relief.